


twice as many stars

by CatchAsCatchCan



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: + a surprise guest, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Age Regression/De-Aging, Dallas Stars, M/M, Magic, john klingberg in an interview: i had to take care of him now he’s taking care of me, me: bro you cannot just SAY that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:30:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22757368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatchAsCatchCan/pseuds/CatchAsCatchCan
Summary: “Esa,” John says, very slowly. “Why do you have a baby?”Then, his eyes snap downward and Esa braces himself. A tiny, high pitched voice pipes up from the vicinity of Esa’s knee. “Who’re you?” Roope asks, and the Finnish makes John’s eyes narrow.“Esa,” John repeats, and this time he looks almost accusatory. “Why do you havetwo babies?”“He’s not a baby,” Esa says, because apparently that’s the fight he’s choosing to have right now. “He’s four.”
Relationships: John Klingberg/Esa Lindell, Miro Heiskanen/Roope Hintz (Implied)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 273





	twice as many stars

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Stars media, who have apparently decided to write 100 articles about these two and about how esa is a good leader, all KO-ing me instantly, and kt who once again comes through with the best damn prompts 
> 
> Takes place in a very specific au where magic is known to some, homophobia is generally non-existent, and NHL bye weeks are nine days instead of seven
> 
> 100% of the details about both Esa and Klinger’s families are invented. 100% of the details about child development come from vague google searches like “WHAT does a four year old talk like” and getting answers like “they have a vocab of 1000 words”, as if that’s helpful at all

Esa wakes up to three missed calls and an SOS text from Roope. He blinks down at his phone and strongly contemplates just going back to sleep, because the sun isn’t even up yet. 

Given past history, this could really be anything from “I’ve killed Miro and burned down my apartment” to “how do you know if milk is expired?” Esa honestly isn’t sure if all rookies are this weird, or if he just got lucky.

The first time Esa got one of Roope’s emergency texts, he had dropped everything, only to find out that Roope wanted advice on which horrible floral tie to wear on a date. (The correct answer had been, “Neither of them, Jesus Christ, did you pick those up from off the side of the road?”) 

Now, Esa normally demands more details before moving an inch, but for some reason Roope isn’t responding to any calls, which doesn’t bode well. With a bone deep sigh, Esa rolls out of bed and goes to bail out one of his idiots. 

Esa knocks a few times, but no one answers. Bad sign, probably. 

He sighs, fishes out Roope’s spare key, and finally jimmies the door open. The apartment is dim, with most of the light streaming in from the far window. Somewhere in the house, he hears a weird noise, and he shivers despite himself. 

“Hinee?” he calls, but doesn’t get a response. And then, on a hunch, “Miro?”

Nothing. 

Slowly, he closes the door behind him so that it doesn’t make a sound. The strange noise is back, muffled like it’s coming from behind a door. Now that he’s all the way inside, it almost sounds like crying, but Esa has heard Roope cry, and it doesn’t sound like this, high-pitched and almost desperate. 

There’s light coming out from under the far door down the hallway. “Roope?” he calls again, not expecting a response. 

The far door slams open. 

It takes Esa a second to figure out what he’s seeing, because he’s expecting a man well over six feet, but instead—

Well, there’s a child standing in the doorway. Esa doesn’t know much about kids, but this one can’t be older than four. He’s got stringy blonde hair and huge eyes, staring up at Esa from where they’re both frozen. 

There’s still someone else crying. 

“What the f—” 

“I’m sorry!” the kid cries, voice high pitched and panicky. “We didn’t mean to!” 

“Didn’t mean to, what? Whose kid are you?” Esa asks, hands flying up to tug at his hair. Holy shit, he thinks, did Roope kidnap a child? He wouldn’t. 

Probably. 

The kid opens and closes his mouth a few times, and then whoever is crying lets out a spectacular wail. The kid and Esa wince in unison, and the kid pushes the door all the way open. 

There is a baby on Roope’s bed. 

Esa says a few choice words he definitely shouldn’t say in front of two children. 

The blonde kid looks sheepish. “Sorry,” he says again, and Esa realizes belatedly that he’s speaking in Finnish, not English. “We really didn’t mean to.” 

Now that Esa is paying attention, the kid is wearing what appears to be a huge T-shirt, or what is probably more accurately an adult shirt on a tiny person. If Esa imagines him about two decades older, this kid would look a hell of a lot like—

“Roope?” he asks, feeling like an idiot. 

There’s no way. Esa has to deal with a lot from his rookies, but there is no fucking way. 

The kid nods. 

It takes about an hour to get the full story, because four-year-olds are both easily distracted and more prone to tears than Esa is prepared to deal with. 

As Esa tries to deal with the most immediate issues, Roope toddles along behind him explaining how this all started with a weird package on his doorstep. Esa is a little distracted trying to swaddle a crying baby in a blanket—Miro, he realizes with dawning horror—but from what he can gather, Roope forgot about this mystery package for two weeks, opened it this morning, and had just enough time to fire off a few emergency messages to Esa before he ended up three feet tall. 

He’s immensely grateful, all of a sudden, for all the impromptu babysitting his sister foisted on him this summer, because it only takes a few minutes of walking and quiet murmuring before Miro is asleep in his arms.

Miro being at Roope’s house at six in the morning is an issue for another day, Esa decides. He can harass his rookies about this when they’re old enough.

Thank god it’s bye week, because otherwise they’d all be well and truly fucked. Reluctantly, he pulls out his phone and cancels his flight—He’ll think of a good excuse later. First things first: getting everybody from Roope’s apartment to Esa’s house. 

It’s not a far drive, because when Esa bought a house with his new contract money, it was unanimously decided by the team that the other Finns would have to find apartments no more than five minutes away. Sometimes this is a curse, because Roope is very easily bored and has little to no sense of when people normally choose to sleep. Other times, like right now, it’s a goddamned blessing. 

Esa drives twenty miles under the speed limit, even with no cars around, and still feels panicked the whole time. Miro, apparently blissfully unaware of Esa’s ongoing near heart attack, falls asleep in his lap. 

Esa is never, ever having his own children. Jesus Christ. 

He is, practically speaking, already a twenty-five year old father of two morons only a few years younger than him, but this is—

“Roope! Jesus, put that down!” he has to turn and yell, because Roope has decided to try and put his hands on multiple kitchen appliances that a four year old has no business messing with. 

At the noise, Miro starts in his arms and screws up his face. 

“Oh, no, please don’t cry,” Esa mutters, patting Miro’s back and wondering for the upteenth time how the fuck he ended up here. Miro doesn’t listen, because he rarely does, and lets out a spectacularly loud wail. Esa rubs his forehead with his free hand.

Amazon two hour delivery is saving his fucking life right now. He spent what felt like half his contract on baby and toddler supplies, only to realize when they were delivered that he would have to assemble everything while trying to keep two children alive. But at the very least he now has clothes and diapers and enough Cheerios to distract Roope for about forty-five minutes. 

It takes about three hours, four minor crises, and two breaks to feed Miro for Esa assemble a crib, and by the end of it he’s ready to collapse. He finds himself seated on the floor, back against the crib and rocking Miro in his arms while Roope absentmindedly draws on the wall with a crayon. 

That, Esa firmly decides, is another problem for another day. 

Dinner is another goddamn ordeal. 

“How,” Esa pauses from where he’s attempting to make some sort of child-safe, un-choke-able macaroni, “are you somehow harder to handle when you’re three feet tall?”

Roope looks up from where he’s carefully dipping his fingers in orange juice and using it to finger paint on the kitchen counter. He shrugs. 

“Fair enough,” Esa mutters, and turns back to stirring pasta with a baby in one hand. 

He’s almost definitely doing all of this wrong. The most likely outcome here is that he kills one of the two future hopes for the Dallas Stars, and then has to run away to the wilds of Finland and change his name and work in finance or something. He’s about seventy percent sure that John would help sneak him out of the country, but it’s not a sure thing. 

Roope, as it turns out, grew out of some picky eating habits because he takes one bite of pasta and spits it out dramatically. He pulls a truly horrific face and pushes the plate towards Esa. “No,” he says. “Bad. Bad, bad, bad.” 

“You have to eat it,” Esa says, looking up from where he’s carefully spooning some gross concoction of mashed food into Miro’s weird tiny baby mouth. “I don’t have anything else.” He feels like his mom. 

Roope shakes his head and crosses his arms over his chest. “No,” he wines, drawing out the vowel. Esa resists the urge to groan. 

“Well,” he says, sort of helplessly, “If you don’t want to eat it, there’s nothing else to eat.” Behind him, Miro protests being ignored and Esa goes back to feeding him. 

There’s a loud clatter and Esa whips around to find Roope tossing his plate of food on the floor and stomping off into the living room. 

“Okay,” Esa says. He’ll clean that up after he finishes feeding Miro and changes him and finds time to eat himself and—

Ugh, he’ll probably clean it up tomorrow. He has a very good pesticide person anyway. 

It takes a full day for Roope and Esa to get in a screaming match. Esa is, all things considered, very proud of their restraint. 

Something small eventually snowballs into Roope whining about being hungry, which turns into Esa snapping that he could have eaten dinner last night, which evolves into some sort of personal jab from Roope, and eventually ends with Esa yelling, “Well I didn’t want to fucking deal with this either, but I am!” 

Roope immediately clams up and his eyes start to get watery. Fuck, Esa feels like a monster. He’s pretty sure that this proves that he’s really, really bad with kids. 

“That was mean,” Roope sniffs, voice high, and stomps out of the room, slamming the door to the guest room, where Miro’s crib is also set up. By some miracle, the baby doesn’t start sobbing. 

Esa looks down at the ground and rubs his palms over his face. Is it possible to retroactively damage someone’s childhood? He feels like parenting books probably don’t cover this. Even if they did, he doesn’t have time to read them anyway. He’s barely even looked at his phone in two days. 

He gives Roope a few minutes, then follows him into Miro’s room. 

“Hey,” he says. Roope is sitting on the floor, tiny legs kicked out in front of him. He’s sniffling, but not crying. Esa decides to count this as progress. 

Roope doesn’t look up. 

He approaches slowly, like Roope’s a wild animal. He may not have any parenting experience, but he did once rescue a stray cat and this feels similar. He levers himself down onto the ground next to Roope, adopting the same pose. 

Now they’re both staring at the ground, not making eye contact. Esa supposes that he is, technically, the grownup in this situation. “Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad.”

Roope rubs at his nose, but doesn’t look up. “Sorry I said you’re a bad dad,” he mutters. 

Esa can’t help himself. He starts laughing a little hysterically. Roope finally looks up at him, alarmed. “No,” he chokes out. “You’re right. I’m really, really not good at this.”

Roope frowns, then shakes his head, blonde hair flying out of the shitty ponytail Esa had stuck it in that morning. “No, not bad.”

Esa blinks down at him. “Thanks?” he says, like it’s a question. 

Solemnly, Roope gets up to his knees and waddles forward until he can wrap his arms around Esa’s middle. Perplexed, Esa reaches down and sort of pats him on the back. 

He guesses this means he’s forgiven. 

Miro wakes up sobbing three times that night, and Esa doesn’t feel so goddamn charitable at five in the morning. 

It takes Esa way too long to realize that someone is knocking on the door, but in his defense, he’s slept maybe four hours in the past two days. He almost doesn’t want to get up to get it, because he’s sure as bad as he feels, he must look worse, but then the banging increases in volume and he can’t ignore it.

“What?” he demands when he swings the door open. 

It’s Klinger, caught with his hand frozen mid-knock, looking confused and a little worried. He stares at Esa for a second, eyes clearly getting caught on his disheveled hair. A furrow forms between his eyebrows.

“Es? What’s going on?” he asks, and then, tactful as ever, “You look awful.” He sort of leans forward, like he’s going to try to really examine the bags under Esa’s eyes. Abruptly, Esa becomes aware that he’s wearing a two day old shirt and has baby food stains on his pants. 

None of this explains why John is here, at his house. Esa just sort of blinks at him, trying to put together what he’s seeing. “I thought you were leaving for bye week?” 

“I am, I leave in four hours, but no one’s heard from you or your underlings in a few days, so—” 

Esa’s phone has been sitting, uncharged, on his bedside table for the past thirty-six hours. He can’t even remember the last time he opened his email inbox. 

Irritations stirs deep in his gut. He knows it’s irrational, but he’s so fucking tired. His last meal was four crackers he shoved in his mouth while trying to get Roope to put on clothes. 

“So someone sent you to check on me?” Esa demands, voice tight. “I can take care of myself.”

John blinks, looking a little hurt. “I know you can, I was just—a little worried, is all,” he trails off. 

Esa feels himself deflate. 

“Sorry,” he says, avoiding looking directly at John. “It’s been a weird—”

And of course, at that exact moment, Miro starts crying. 

“Holy fuck, is that a baby?” John exclaims, eyes going wide. Shit.

Esa takes a deep, shuddering breath, then tips his head back to rest against the doorframe. He closes his eyes and imagines a world where this isn’t his life. 

“Yes,” he says. “That’s a baby.” He’s impressed with how calmly the words come out. 

“Esa,” John says, very slowly. “Why do you have a baby?”

They stand there frozen for a second, and then his eyes snap downward and Esa braces himself. He should have closed the damn door behind him. A tiny, high pitched voice pipes up from the vicinity of Esa’s knee. “Who’re you?” Roope asks, and the Finnish makes John’s eyes narrow.

“Esa,” John repeats, and this time he looks almost accusatory. “Why do you have _two babies_?”

“He’s not a baby,” Esa says, because apparently that’s the fight he’s choosing to have right now. “He’s four.”

“Why do you have a baby and a…” John trails off and then just gestures at all of Roope. “Why?”

“Es, who is he?” Roope asks, tugging at Esa’s pant leg nervously. “I don’t like him.” In any other moment, that would be hilarious, but right now Esa just spares a moment to be grateful John put his front teeth in this morning. 

Esa knocks his head against the doorframe again, and decides to deal with his problems in order of increasing severity. 

“That’s John,” he says, switching to Finnish. “He’s a friend, I promise.” Roope’s grip relaxes, though he’s still shooting John uncomfortable glances. Inside, Miro is crying even louder. 

In English, Esa says, “Just, come inside. I’ll explain, but first I need to get him to stop crying.”

John is staring at him. Impatiently, Esa jerks his head at the door, and silently, John follows him inside the house.

“So,” John says. “Let me get this straight. Your rookies have somehow managed to lose twenty years?” He’s taking this all with impressive restraint. 

Esa just nods, then leans forward to press his cheek against the cool surface of the tabletop. Out of the corner of his eye he can see bits of dried pasta on the ground. 

“And when did that happen?”

“About …” Esa pauses to think. The passage of time doesn’t feel real anymore. “Three days ago.” 

John frowns. “And you’ve been babysitting two kids for three days? Alone?”

Esa nods again, without lifting his head up.

“Jesus, Es. You could have called me.”

“You were going out of town,” Esa protests. 

He’s not going to say the real reason, which is that John already takes care of him enough; he didn't want to foist this on him too. Plus, the Finnish Mafia usually handles their problems internally, which sounds cool, but really just means that he gets a lot of drunk texts at two am. 

Also, privately, he sort of didn’t want John to see him like this, with greasy unwashed hair and a truly disgusting house. 

“Well, I’m sure as fuck not leaving now,” John says firmly.

Esa sits upright very quickly. “What?” His voice goes a little too high pitched. 

“I’m not leaving you here alone, idiot.” 

“You really don’t have to,” Esa protests. “I’ve got it under control.”

As if to really help sell his point, Miro starts crying again, louder this time. Esa can’t stop himself from groaning. John raises a single very blonde eyebrow. 

“When’s the last time you took a shower?”

Esa wrinkles his nose. “When’s the last time I didn’t have to worry about accidentally killing Miro?” 

John snorts. “And when’s the last time you slept more than two hours in a row?”

Esa can’t give a good answer to that, like, at all. 

John nods, like that answers all his questions, and then stands up. He leans over the table to prod at Esa’s shoulder until he looks up at him. 

“Go take a shower, you look like you’re about to die. And you smell awful.”

“But, Miro—” Esa starts to protest. 

“I’ve got him,” John says, with way more confidence than Esa feels is really warranted. He narrows his eyes.

John grins. “What? I practically raised my baby brother. It’ll be fine, I swear.”

The last time John smiled at him and promised everything would be fine, he had immediately then tried to fight Brian Boyle. Brian Boyle has sixty five pounds over Klinger. It had not been “fine” in any sense of the word. 

Esa lets out the longest sigh of his life, then lets go of the spark of protectiveness curling in his chest. “Fine.”

John honest to god pumps his fist in the air.

Esa stands under the hot water for just long enough to start feeling like a person again before he feels guilty about abandoning John to the whims of Roope and Miro. He towels off his hair, pulls on a clean shirt for the first time in two days, and goes to rescue his d-partner. 

He can hear John talking softly from down the hallway, and he follows the sounds to the living room. 

John is standing in the middle of the living room, rocking Miro in his arms and talking in low soft Swedish. Miro is snoring quietly and John is smiling, a little helplessly. 

“He’s pretty cute,” John says. 

“Yeah, when he shuts the hell up,” Esa says, but he’s laughing a little.

John shushes him and puts his hand over one of Miro’s ears. “Hey, not in front of the baby!” 

Esa really shouldn’t be so affected by John holding a baby, especially when that baby is normally a twenty year old defensive wunderkind. But still, it kind of makes his heart do a funny thing, seeing how good John is with kids. 

“Looks like a curse,” John says apropos of nothing. 

“Looks like a _what_?”

“Roope said they opened some mystery box and then this happened?” 

Esa doesn’t quite follow, but he nods anyway.

“Yeah,” John says. “Sounds like a pretty standard curse.” 

Esa feels like tearing out his own hair.

“Should only last a few days,” John continues, way more definitively than Esa is comfortable with. 

“How the hell do you know that?” he demands. He should probably be more polite to the man who has just voluntarily agreed to co-parent two magically tiny hockey players, but he’s also exhausted and confused and at the end of his rope. 

Klinger shrugs. “My brother’s a witch,” he says, like that’s obvious. 

“Sure,” Esa says, and then Miro starts crying again. 

Finally, at two am, they get both Miro and Roope to go to bed and stay there. Esa is dead on his feet, so tired he can barely keep his eyes open. 

He definitely owes his mom a phone call. And maybe some flowers. 

Esa doesn’t even realize that he’s leaning on the counter for support until John’s turning him around and pulling him into a hug. He has to blink a few times to clear the tired fog from his brain, but it’s been three straight sleepless nights and his self control is basically nil at this point, so he just lets John hold him up. 

When he tries to open his eyes, they feel so heavy that he just gives up. 

John must be saying something, but Esa can’t make out what it is. John’s got one hand pressed against Esa’s upper back and the other resting on his hip, and that’s all he can focus on. He tips his head forward to rest on John’s shoulder and lets himself have this.

They’re sort of swaying back and forth, the same motion that John used to get Miro to fall asleep. Esa kind of gets it now, honestly. 

John is talking again, something low and quiet, but Esa can only really feel the vibrations of his voice against his chest. Esa has never known him to be this quiet, this reserved. 

It takes a few seconds for Esa to realize that he’s actually humming something, some slow Swedish song Esa only vaguely recognizes. John can’t really carry a tune, but it’s still kind of nice. 

For a few minutes, they stand together, swaying and exhausted in Esa’s kitchen, until John murmurs, “Time to go to bed, Es,” and steers him towards the bedroom with an arm around his waist, never breaking contact. He’s probably afraid that if he lets go, Esa will just slump to the floor and go to sleep right then and there, and he’s not entirely wrong. 

John deposits him on the bed, and Esa sits there, just blinking up at him for a second before shaking his head in an unsuccessful attempt to clear the cobwebs out of it. 

“You should take your socks off,” John says. Dutifully, Esa complies, and then, on second thought, also pulls his shirt over his head. This just leaves him in day-old sweatpants, but at least they’re marginally clean and not spattered with baby food. 

“Pajamas,” Esa says, gesturing vaguely at his wardrobe. He’s too tired for English. 

“Thanks,” John says, and snags a pair of pants and a shirt totally at random. “I’ll just—change and set up the couch?”

Esa is also too tired for good decisions. “No,” he says. “Stay?”

John looks at him, then nods slowly. “You better not kick in your sleep,” he says, disappearing into the bathroom. 

Esa is asleep before he gets back. 

When Esa wakes up, it’s to the sunlight streaming through the window, not to a screaming baby. That alone is enough to get him out of bed in a hurry, because there’s no way he’s gotten a good night’s sleep without something going dangerously wrong. 

When he stumbles his way into the kitchen, he expects a catastrophe, or at least a little blood. Instead, there’s Miro sitting in the highchair Esa had given up building the day before, kicking his little legs in the air. Roope is crouched on a stool at the counter, picking at a piece of toast. 

There are no dishes in the sink, and when he leans over to check, the three-day old dried pasta has been scraped off the floor.

John walks into the kitchen, holding a laundry basket and bopping his head to something playing on his phone. He freezes when he sees Esa standing in the doorway. “Hey,” he says warily. “I hope you don’t mind. I know you can take care of yourself, but—”

“_Thank_ you,” Esa says cutting him off. If it comes out kind of reverently, sue him. He hasn’t had time to even think about laundry since he woke up Saturday morning. John might as well be a goddamn angel. 

The next night, Esa is just on the verge of falling asleep when he shoots upright. 

“Wha…?” John slurs sleepily, cracking open one eye.

“What the fuck did you mean when you said your brother was a witch?” Esa demands.

“Did you just remember that now?” John asks, laughter in his voice. He looks only slightly more awake, blonde hair falling in his eyes.

“Yes! It was a long day!”

“It runs on my mom's side,” John explains, settling back against the pillows. “Not really a big deal, he can't do that much.” He shrugs, like this is nothing. “Turned me into a frog once when I was three. Mom wasn’t thrilled about it, but I think I turned out fine.” 

Esa gapes at him. 

“You are,” he says with extreme relish, “the weirdest man I have ever met.”

John just grins his stupid toothless grin at him. “All part of my charm.”

And he's not entirely wrong, but Esa will be damned before he ever says so. 

Somehow, one day becomes another becomes another and all of a sudden, John has been co-parenting with Esa for almost four days. There are only two days left of bye week and Esa tries not to think about what will happen if they don’t get this solved soon. 

He wakes up to a baby crying and John’s arm slung across his hip. It’s too dark to make anything out, and he has to yawn a few times before he remembers where he is.

“Your turn,” John mutters, still half asleep. The way his lips ghost across the back of Esa’s neck makes him shiver, but he reluctantly rolls out of bed to go check on Miro.

Miro is much needier as a baby than he is an adult, and much louder. They’re all lucky that Roope, at any age, can sleep through practically anything. 

Miro quiets down immediately once he’s cradled in Esa’s arms, letting out little hiccups and fisting his hands in Esa’s shirt. He is, frankly, adorable, even if he’s also the reason Esa is awake at four in the morning again.

“Hey,” Esa says, then feels a little silly for talking to a baby. “Come back soon, okay? Hinee is useless without you.” The baby huffs a little, and Esa laughs under his breath. “It’s weird, okay, going this long without hearing from you two.”

He rubs a hand down Miro’s back and feels his tiny fists relaxing as he fades back into sleep. 

“You’re good with them, you know,” comes a voice from the doorway. Esa jumps and nearly drops Miro. 

“Jesus, Klinger,” he whisper-shouts. 

In his arms, Miro stirs, then babbles happily when he sees John standing in the doorway. 

“I mean it,” John says, and smiles without his teeth. 

Immediately, Miro shrinks back against Esa’s chest and turns his head to hide his face in Esa's shoulder. Esa glances between Miro and John a few times before snickering.

“Your teeth scared him, dumbass,” Esa says, trying not to laugh out loud. He’s never, ever going to let Miro live this down. He can’t wait to tell Roope. 

“What? No they didn’t,” John protests, and tries to take Miro out of Esa’s hold. Immediately Miro screws up his face and screams.

Esa snatches him back and shields his eyes. “Shh, the scary man won’t hurt you,” he says, switching to Finnish. It takes a few moments of whispered words and bouncing before Miro settles again. John watches warily from the doorway the whole time, apparently having learned his lesson. 

“Are you turning our kid against me?” John asks, accusatory, then freezes as he seems to realize what he just said. “I mean—”

“Yes,” Esa says plainly, ignoring the way the slip made his heart jump. “Obviously.”

Esa is making his way to the living room, toweling off his hair, when he hears his name and pauses. There are voices coming from the kitchen, John’s and Roope’s. 

“You gotta be nice,” Roope is saying. He has a very elementary grasp of English at this age, and clearly prefers to speak Finnish with Esa. Lately though, he’s started talking to John too, and John tries to pretend like he’s not thrilled. 

“To Esa?” 

Roope hums, and Esa can picture him grinning his wide smile. 

“He’s im— im—” Roope sounds frustrated, unable to grasp the word. 

“Important?” John prods. 

Roope says, very seriously, “Yes! He’s—that.” 

“He’s important to you?” John asks. There’s a pause, and Roope must be nodding, because John says, real quiet, “Good. He’s important to me too.”

He’ll never give him the satisfaction of knowing, but without John, they all probably would have starved. Esa is normally very on top of the groceries, but on the fifth morning, he opens up the fridge and finds three eggs, some expired almond milk, and nothing else. 

He didn’t even know almond milk could go bad. Dry cereal for lunch it is, then. 

He tries to hedge around directly asking John to go out to the store, but John’s always been too good at reading him. 

“I was already planning on going today,” he says breezily. “Don’t doubt my skills, dude.”

“_Dude_,” Esa mimics. “You’ve been in Texas too long.” 

John just swats at his head and goes to buy some real, not-rotten vegetables. 

Esa ends up falling asleep on the couch waiting for John to get back. He jolts awake to find Miro sleeping on his chest, Roope tucked into his side, and John standing in the living room staring at them. 

His cheeks are kind of red, and that makes Esa want to blush too. 

“Hey,” he says instead.

John jumps. 

“Just waiting to see if you’re going to help carry in any of these bags,” John chirps, but it comes out a little funny. 

Esa rolls his eyes, but gets off the couch and shifts so that he’s holding Miro with one arm. “C’mon,” he says, prodding Roope. “Let’s help John with the groceries.”

If he closes his eyes, it almost feels like—

That’s something to think about later. 

John helps fix breakfast, and it makes Esa smile because John’s no morning person. They both putter around the kitchen in silence, while Miro babbles incoherently in his highchair and Roope nods off into a plate of eggs. 

Esa knows he shouldn’t get caught up in this, playing house with John. He does miss his rookies, he does, but he still finds himself imagining a future where he gets to come home to this. Lately, he’s been too tired to stop himself. 

He’s just stepping back from where he’s putting a plate in the microwave when he accidentally slams into John, who’s making his way across the kitchen. He stumbles a little and John reaches out quickly to stop him from tripping.

Esa feels his breath catch. 

“Hey,” he says dumbly. They’re standing so close. John has a hand on his elbow, steadying him. 

“_Hallå_,” John says. His eyes flick down to Esa’s lips and he can’t be imagining it. 

Esa barely has to move when he leans forward and kisses him. It’s chaste, just a soft press of his lips to John’s, the way he’s been thinking about for years. John is warm under his hands and his lips are just a little chapped. Esa feels, for one moment, so lucky that he gets to do this.

John doesn’t kiss him back. 

Instead, he puts his hands on Esa’s shoulders and pushes him back gently. “You’re exhausted,” he says, not unkindly. “You’re exhausted and you don’t mean it.”

He is, Esa realizes, offering him a way out. His heart thuds dully in his chest. 

No one says anything for a long moment. 

“I’m gonna go,” John says, taking a few steps back. “I’ll be back soon, but I think I should leave for a while.”

All Esa can do is nod, the backs of his eyes prickling. When John leaves, the door closes behind him very quietly. 

Somehow he makes it to the living room and drops down on the couch, hard. Distantly, he’s aware that his hands are shaking. Pressing his palms against his eyes so hard he sees stars, he takes several deep breaths and tries to fill the pit in his stomach. 

He feels silly, all of a sudden. He already asks so much of John. Of course he doesn’t want this. 

Fuck, his breathing has gone all ragged again and he can’t cry because he still has to feed Miro. 

He’s pulled out of his thoughts as the couch dips next to him. For one wild second, he thinks John came back, but—no, he didn’t hear the door open. 

There’s a tugging on his sleeve and he pulls his head out of his hands to see Roope curled up on the couch next to him. 

“Don’t be sad,” Roope says, eyes wide. “Don’t cry.” 

Esa just shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says, ruffling Roope’s hair in a way that an older Roope would glare at him for. This Roope just leans forward and hugs him, his arms barely coming around Esa’s middle. 

“Want you to be happy,” he says, sniffling. 

Esa freezes. He and Roope usually communicate through a well-balanced mix of chirps and eyerolls, not anything this genuine. 

“I am happy,” he finally says, a beat too late. “I am.”

Roope just shakes his head and rests his face against Esa’s side. “Be happier,” he says.

Esa floats through the rest of the day in a sort of fog. He makes it through lunch and dinner simply by not thinking too hard about anything in particular. Miro cries for two hours after John leaves and nothing will get him to calm down until he eventually tires out and falls asleep for a few blessedly quiet hours. 

The day winds down, and John doesn’t come back. Roope and Miro seem to pick up on the atmosphere, because they keep fairly calm throughout dinner. Esa doesn’t even have to clean any food off the floor, for once. 

As he’s getting everybody ready for bed, Roope tugs on his hand. “I miss John,” he says quietly. “Can he come back?”

Esa sucks in a breath. “I don’t know,” he says, not looking Roope in the eye. “I hope he comes back.”

Roope’s face pulls into a frown and his eyes start welling up again. “I want him back!” he says again, more petulant. “Make him come back!”

Esa sighs, then lays down on the guest bed next to Roope. “Yeah,” he says, pulling him into a hug and tucking Roope’s head under his chin. “Me too.” 

Roope takes a long hour to finally stop sniffling and fall asleep, and by the time that happens, Miro is awake again and wailing. Esa bounces him in his lap while he spoon feeds him some gross carrot mash, and attempts to stop himself from nodding off.

“I need you to snap out of this,” he tells Miro, like he can understand him. “We need you back soon. I need you back.” Esa may have looked after Roope last year, but Miro was _his_ rookie. 

He’s really damn proud of Miro, and would kindly appreciate if whatever the fuck this is would give him back. Quickly, if possible.

Miro settles against his chest, burbling happily and gumming at the plastic spoon in Esa’s hand. It’s quiet in the kitchen, quieter than it’s been all this week.

The front door slams open. 

“Shit, sorry, sorry,” comes John’s voice from the doorway. “Sorry, it’s the wind.”

Esa freezes and Miro squirms in his arms. Slowly, they both make their way out of the kitchen to see John, wearing the same clothes he left in, standing windswept in the living room. 

“You came back.”

“I said I would.”

“I know, but—”

“I said I would, so I came back,” John says, voice getting short.

Esa backs off. This is his fault, he needs to take responsibility. “I’m going to put this one to bed,” he says, gesturing to Miro. “Just, stay there, okay?”

John nods, but not before he reaches out to rub the short hair on Miro’s head. “Missed ya, little guy,” he says. Miro smiles at him, eyes wide. 

“He missed you,” Esa can’t help but say. “They both did.”

Now it’s John’s turn to go wide-eyed. “Did you?” he asks, and it comes out almost like he didn’t mean to. 

Esa glances away. “I don’t think you get to ask me that right now.”

John looks chagrined. Esa leaves the room with Miro before he can say anything more. 

Miro doesn’t take long to fall asleep. “Traitor,” Esa whispers. The least he could have done was keep Esa from this conversation for a few more minutes, damn it.

When he comes back into the living room, John is sitting on the couch, head in his hands. Esa sits down next to him, but he doesn’t look up.

“Hey,” Esa says. “I’m sorry.” He’s staring at his fingers. 

“Do you even know what you’re sorry for?” John asks, but his tone isn’t angry, just tired. 

Esa nods slowly. “I’m sorry I took advantage,” he says. “You were doing a nice thing, and I just—I just assumed. And I’m sorry.”

John huffs out a sort of laugh. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have made you feel like you owed me anything.” 

Esa sits with that for a minute. It occurs to him that he and John might be having two separate conversations. 

Carefully, slowly, Esa says, “I didn’t feel like I owed you anything.”

John just looks at him. 

“Okay,” Esa corrects. “I’m grateful you helped out, but that’s not why—” he breaks off, swallows, and tries again. “I kissed you because I wanted to.”

John doesn’t say anything, and Esa forges ahead. “I wanted to, that’s all. I’m sorry I read it wrong, I guess.”

John is staring at him. “Read it wrong?”

“I thought—Well, we shared a bed and you helped out with the kids and, I just thought—I’m sorry.” It feels like he’s trying to learn English again for the first time, his sentences choppy and stumbling. 

“Esa,” John says carefully, “what did you think?”

Esa stares at his fingers. “I thought you might, you know, want to kiss me too.” 

“What?”

Esa starts to pull away. “Don’t make me say it again.”

“I wanted you to kiss me,” John says. 

“Then why,” Esa says, and his voice stays impressively calm, “did you leave?”

John reaches out and stops Esa’s fingers from fidgeting together. He laces their hands together. “I thought—” His voice catches, and he has to start over. “I thought you knew how I felt and you felt like you were obligated.”

Esa shakes his head. “No. No, that’s not—,” he says, “_John_.” His voice sounds wrecked, even to his own ears. 

“I’ve wanted to kiss you since _Jokerit_, Klinger. Since I was seventeen.” 

The room stays absolutely still, and then John lunges forward and presses him into the back of the couch. 

“Thank god,” John breathes, and ducks down to kiss him. 

It’s nothing like their first kiss in the kitchen. John has one hand on Esa’s hip and another in his hair, and Esa can’t think straight. He’s clutching at the back of John’s sweater, and it’s heady and a little overwhelming, the way John licks into his mouth. 

Finally, Esa thinks, sighing into the kiss. 

Eventually, they have to breathe. John breaks away and tips their foreheads together. Esa is panting, feeling almost drunk just off the way John is hovering above him. 

“In case it wasn’t clear,” John says between breaths, “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time too.”

Esa kisses him again, just because he can. 

All of a sudden, there’s a loud crash in the back room and John and Esa leap apart, breathing heavily. A slamming noise echoes down the hallway, and they stare at each other, alarmed.

“Jesus FUCK,” someone yells, and then there’s another loud banging noise. “Fucking shit!”

Another, higher-pitched voice lets out a yelp, and then some very colorful Finnish swearing.

Esa looks back and forth between John and the hallway a few times before leaping up and racing for the kids’ room. 

Esa makes Roope and Miro clean up and package all of the baby furniture, while he sits on the couch and refuses to move. Afterwards, he graciously chooses to drive them back to Roope’s apartment. 

John and Esa hold hands over the gearshift, and Roope fake gags in the backseat until Miro slaps him. Wise choice, Esa thinks. He still hasn’t gotten to interrogate them as to what Miro was doing at Roope’s apartment that very first morning. 

Once they get the door open, Roope darts inside. “Hold on,” he announces over his shoulder, “let me find something.”

Miro shrugs, and Esa reluctantly follows him through to the kitchen. 

It’s about two minutes before Roope announces, “Aha!” and finishes rifling through the huge pile of mail on his table. “Here it is!” He withdraws clutching a small box, wrapped in paper with a little white bow on top. 

The wrapping paper is a dark red. Carolina Hurricanes’ red, actually.

Esa pinches the bridge of his nose and fights the urge to sigh, or say something very, very rude. 

The box is empty, except for a tiny slip of paper. When he turns it around, he’s only kind of surprised to see that Teuvo’s tight, scratchy handwriting has written out, _You’re welcome._

(_epilogue._)

Tyler freezes with his drink in the air. “Wait,” he says, squinting, “you mean you haven’t been together this whole time?” Without waiting for a response, Tyler whirls around, waving his arms over his head for attention. “Hey! Hey, Chubbs, come listen to this shit!” 

Jamie, with the patience of a saint, rolls his eyes and turns from his conversation with Bishop. “What’s up?” 

“Team mom and dad didn’t even know they were married,” Tyler announces grandly, and Jamie swats at him, a familiar ‘knock it off’ motion. Esa flushes bright red and ducks his head down while Tyler cackles.

“We’re very happy for you,” Jamie says diplomatically. 

Tyler rolls his eyes and shoves him away. “Yeah, blah, blah, blah, o’ captain my captain. Now shut up, I want the details.” He leans forward eagerly, and Esa can feel John chuckling against him.

“Well, speaking of team mom and dad…” John starts, and Esa can’t help but laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Four day uni break means writing fic and not doing the 26 readings i'm behind on, right? oops
> 
> Title from the poem the two headed calf
> 
> You can also find me on twitter [@catchascatchcn](https://www.twitter.com/catchascatchcn)! Feel free to come chat about Stars and defensemen families


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